SF A camps were scattered all over Viet Nam. They had various configurations—square, triangular, and in the case of Dak Pek, seven individually fortified small hills. They were sited in different terrain, too. The watery delta, the hilly highlands, and every sort of situation in between.
They usually had an air strip, a raw strip of dirt where vegetation had been unceremoniously scraped away by bull dozers. That little strip was very important to the camp. It was their lifeline for supplies, food and ammunition that was necessary to prosecute the war. Helicopters could bring people and small amounts of stuff, but the heavy lifting was done by fixed wing aircraft.
The C-123 aircraft was the primary workhorse for that job, at least where I was. It had excellent short take off and landing characteristics and carried a good sized load. Those two old piston engines would wind up real tight and away it would go. One C-123 had a memorable day. An Air Force pilot won the Medal of Honor when he landed one under direct machine gun and rocket fire on the Kham Duc SF camp strip to pick a couple of USAF types that were accidentally left when the rest of the camp evacuated. He got everyone out safely, too.
There was another time when I witnessed an amazing feat by an Air Force pilot. I was visiting Mang Buk, a small camp northeast of Kontum. While we were there a C-123 landed to offload supplies. When it got ready to leave, the pilot took it to one end of the air strip and revved up those engines, getting up full power with the brakes on. They were really thundering.
Guess first I’d better describe the physical setup. If you were to stand at the end of the strip where the craft was winding up its engines, and looked down the strip, here’s what you’d see. The camp sat on the right side of the strip, with the defensive wire only a few feet from the edge of the landing surface. A gentle slope rose from the camp across the strip and up a hill on the left. Of course, the bull dozers had carved some of that slope away for the strip. That left a bank about 8 feet high along the left side of the strip. Into that bank, the dozers had carved out a rectangular niche for the chopper pad, maybe a hundred feet square. All around the top of the bank surrounding the chopper pad the team had placed roll after roll of concertina wire. And there was a chopper, the one I had arrived in, setting on the pad. Got the picture now?
When the pilot was ready to take off, he released the brakes and that big fat plane started its takeoff roll. But it wasn’t long until the right engine started coughing and losing power. The left engine, still running strong, started pulling the plane to the right toward the camp. Uh, oh! Disaster in the making, and people started moving with unusual speed to get out of its path.
I don’t know how the pilot did it, but he got that right engine going again almost immediately, and at the same time started turning the plane to the left so as to miss the camp. The combination of the right engine resuming power and the pilot steering the plane to the left caused an unfortunate oversteer. Now the plane was headed directly toward the chopper pad. Fortunately, the helicopter was far enough in from the strip that it probably would escape the crash.
Now here is when the miracle intervened. The pilot yanked that old plane into the air—thank goodness for the short take off capability—and just missed hitting the top of the vertical side of the chopper pad niche. Its wheels actually might have touched the ground there, but I can’t say one way or the other. What I did see was that plane flying away trailing several rolls of that concertina wire from its landing gear doors.
After several minutes we began to breath again. I suspect the pilot eventually resumed breathing, too.
Author’s note: On August 9, 2010, I received an email from a former Dak Pek officer who forwarded an email from a C123 pilot from the 1966 period. I contacted the pilot and told him about my stories and experiences with C123 aircraft. He told me that the official Air Force version was a bit different than what I wrote above. His words: “The Mang Buk story was a different version than the one we got in Nha Trang. According to the pilots, the nose wheel cocked to the right and the left braking didn't help so they pulled the throttle back on the left engine, over corrected and didn't get the throttle up in time to go straight down the runway. The crew didn't know they had the wire until the tower a Pleiku advised that they were dragging something.”
Now I was just a gravel agitator and not an expert on aircraft malfunctions. So, dear reader, you can make your own judgment about which story is nearer the truth. Either story sounds to me like that aircraft pilot had to change his drawers when he got back to home base.
Copyright 2010
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